China's Foreign Relations

At a national meeting on diplomatic work in August 2004, China’s president
Hu Jintao reiterated that China will continue its “independent foreign
policy of peaceful
development,” stressing the need for a peaceful and stable international
environment, especially
among China’s neighbors, that will foster “mutually beneficial cooperation”
and “common
development.” This policy line has varied little in intent since the People’s
Republic was
established in 1949, but the rhetoric has varied in its stridency to reflect
periods of domestic
political upheaval.

At its inception, the People’s Republic had a close relationship with
the Soviet Union and the
Eastern Bloc nations, sealed with, among other agreements, the China-Soviet
Treaty of
Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance signed in 1950 to oppose China’s
chief antagonists,
the West and in particular the United States. The 1950–53 Korean War waged
by China and its
North Korea ally against the United States, South Korea, and United Nations
(UN) forces has
long been a reason for bitter feelings.

By the late 1950s, relations between China and the Soviet
Union had become so divisive that in 1960 the Soviets unilaterally withdrew
their advisers from
China. The two then began to vie for allegiances among the developing world
nations, for China
saw itself as a natural champion through its role in the Non-Aligned Movement
and its numerous
bilateral and bi-party ties. By 1969 relations with Moscow were so tense that
fighting erupted
along their common border. China then lessened its anti-Western rhetoric and
began developing
formal diplomatic relations with West European nations.

Around the same time, in 1971, that Beijing succeeded in gaining China’s
seat in the UN (thus
ousting the Republic of China on Taiwan), relations with the United States began
to thaw. In
1973 President Richard M. Nixon visited China. Formal diplomatic relations were
established in
1978, and the two nations have experienced more than a quarter century of varying
degrees of
amiable or wary relations over such contentious issues as Taiwan, trade balances,
intellectual
property rights, nuclear proliferation, and human rights.

In October 2005, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld visited Beijing at the invitation of the minister of national
defense and vice
chairman of the Central Military Commission, Cao Gangchuan. Cao and Rumsfeld
exchanged
views on regional and international issues as well as on the future development
of bilateral
relations between their nations and armed forces. They agreed to work toward
placing military
relations on a level “commensurate with the relations with the two countries.”

China’s relations with its Asian neighbors have become stable during the
last decades of the
twentieth century. Despite a border war with India in 1962 and general distrust
between the two
(mostly over China’s close relationship with Pakistan and India’s
with the former Soviet Union),
in the early 2000s relations between the world’s two largest nations have
never been more
harmonious. China had long been a close ally of North Korea but also found a
valuable trading
partner in South Korea and eventually took a role in the early 2000s as a proponent
of “six-party
talks” (North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan, the United States, and
China) to resolve
tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

On November 15, 2005, Hu Jintao visited Seoul and spoke of
the importance of both countries’ contributions for regional peace and
cooperation in economic
development. Japan, with its large economic and cultural influences in Asia,
is seen by China as
its most formidable opponent and partner in regional diplomacy. The two sides
established
diplomatic relations in 1972, and Japanese investment in China was important
in the early years
of China’s economic reforms and ever since.

Having fought two wars against Japan (1894–95
and 1936–45), China’s long-standing concern about the level of Japan’s
military strength
surfaces periodically, and criticism of Japan’s refusal to present a full
version of the atrocities of
World War II in its textbooks is a perennial issue. China has stable relations
with its neighbors to
the south. A border war was fought with one-time close ally Vietnam in 1979,
but relations have
improved since then. A territorial dispute with its Southeast Asian neighbors
over islands in the
South China Sea remains unresolved, as does another dispute in the East China
Sea with Japan.

The end of the long-held animosity between Moscow and Beijing was marked by
the visit to
China by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989. After the 1991 demise of
the Soviet
Union, China’s relations with the Russian Federation and the former states
of the Soviet Union
became more amicable. A new round of bilateral agreements was signed during
reciprocal head
of state visits. As in the early 1950s with the Soviet Union, Russia has again
become an
important source of military matériel for China, as well as for raw materials
and trade. Friendly
relations with Russia have been an important advantage for China, offsetting
its often uneasy
relations with the United States.

Relations with Europe, both Eastern and Western, generally
have been friendly in the early twenty-first century, and, indeed, close political
and trade
relations with the European Union nations have been a major thrust of China’s
foreign policy in
the 2000s. In November 2005, President Hu Jintao visited the United Kingdom,
Germany, and
Spain and announced China’s eagerness to enter into greater political
and economic cooperation
with its European partners.

Although committed to good relations with the nations of the Middle East, Africa,
and Latin
America, in the twenty-first century China finds perhaps the greatest value
in these areas as
markets and sources of raw materials. The years of solidarity with revolutionary
movements in
these regions have long been replaced by efforts to cultivate normal diplomatic
and economic
relations.